Traditional menu boards are static, printed materials that are located in and/or near an associated restaurant. Traditional menu boards allow a diner to view menu items once they have arrived at the restaurant. Digital signage allows the possibility of making menu boards dynamically changeable, but typical digital menu boards are currently deployed in proximity to the associated restaurant according to the same model used for printed menu boards. Typically a menu board is dedicated to a particular restaurant and will display the theme and menu items of that particular restaurant to which it is dedicated. The dedicated relationship and proximate location makes it easy for the diner to identify the menu board for a desired restaurant, but leads to a great deal of duplicated hardware for restaurants wishing to deploy menu boards in multiple locations.
Alternatively, menus are currently displayed via the internet on mobile devices. This allows a single device to support any number of restaurant menus irrespective of their proximity at the inconvenience of causing the diner to enter an internet address or search for the desired restaurant amongst unconstrained choices. Location aware internet services do simplify this somewhat by constraining choices to proximate dining establishments, however, existing solutions do not present dedicated interactive menu boards.